Protection Types

Inventions

How to protect your inventions?

For your inventions to continue being exclusively yours, you will have to register them. If it is a technical invention, you should protect them as a patent or a utility model. If you want to protect the appearance of your product, you should protect it as an industrial design.

Patents

Patents are rights that grant you the exclusive use of an invention, whether it’s a product or a process, for period of 20 years, preventing third parties from selling, distributing or commercially using them.

Utility models

Utility models are very similar to patents, although they are less expensive and the granting requirements are less demanding. However, and despite of also ensuring the monopoly over the technical aspects of the invention, they have a shorter protection period.

Industrial designs

Contrary to patents and utility models, industrial designs grant the exclusive rights to protect the appearance of handcrafted and industrial products. This protection includes their shapes, colors or lines, and does not include their technical or functional aspects.

With our support, you will avoid misunderstandings about which type of rights should protect your inventions. You will benefit from highly-efficient consulting throughout the whole process, both before and after the registration of the best suited type of protection, meaning you’ll be able to fully dedicate yourself to your activity.

Monitoring the granting decision or notifications, making additional information available or responding to the necessary administrative processes. During this period, the invention's owners can publish and market them.

Increase your protection after registering your rights!

Protection and security. These are the two values that we guarantee, making use of the following tools:

Internationalization

We provide details about other countries’ jurisdictions and point out the best internationalization strategies, not forgetting that we help cutting the costs related to applications and registrations. Learn more.

Watch

With this service, we'll send you a notification every time your product or process – registered under a patent or a utility model – is made, used, or sold in a harmful or illegal way by third parties anywhere in the world. Learn more.

Portfolio management

If you own many Intellectual Property assets, we monitor the development of your rights by giving you updated information about your legal status and advising you about the best maintenance strategies. Learn more.

Rights defense

We protect your exclusive rights, enforcing them to preserve their value. Therefore, we contact administrative authorities and other entities in the face of infringements against your monopoly or the scope of the license. Learn more.

We invite you to better understand what a patent is and how to protect your inventions.

A patent is a right that grants you the exclusive use of an invention, whether it’s a product or a process, for a period of 20 years, preventing third parties from selling, distributing or using it commercially.

However, to be considered as a patent, the invention must be novel, i.e., it shouldn’t already exist on the market when it doesn’t form part of the state of the art; it must involve an inventive step not being obvious to a person skilled in the art; and it must have an industrial application.

A patent is an intangible asset, being a source of profit that can be sold or licensed.

Every kind of invention (product or process) in the technology sector can be patented, as long as it is new, capable of industrial application and innvolves and inventive step. In other words, if an invention is beyond the state of art, it can be patented. However, the criteria for defining inventions and the interpretation of these criteria may differ according to the jurisdiction.

In general, if they meet the aforementioned requirements, patents can protect inventions ranging from machines to medicines or appliances, as well as biological compositions or new ways of obtaining products, substances, or compositions which are already known.

Inventions can also be protected with utility models, and aesthetic inventions with industrial designs:

Utility models are similar to patents as they, equally, provide the monopoly on an invention’s technical aspects. However, Utility Models only require a practical or technical advantage in the manufacture of a product or in the use of a process already known. They are less expensive and faster to obtain, but have a shorter protection period.

Industrial designs offer the exclusive rights that protect the aesthetic aspects of a certain manufactured or handcrafted product, including the decorative aspects, such as its shape or color.

We have a highly-specialized and dedicated team to help you understand what a patent, utility model, or industrial design is and to help you define the best protection strategy for your invention. To this end, services exist to cover the monitoring of your rights, the surveillance of harmful and illegal acts by third parties anywhere in the world, the internationalization of the various forms of protection, and the management of your portfolio, which encompasses the provision of updated information about the status of the invention on the market.